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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27061888">Sleeping and Waking</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteriousgemstone/pseuds/mysteriousgemstone'>mysteriousgemstone</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, CPR, Caretaking, Dehydration, Disabled Character, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Lance Being a Hero, Rescue, Stranded, Traumatic Brain Injury, Whump</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:21:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,788</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27061888</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteriousgemstone/pseuds/mysteriousgemstone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The lions were down. The comm lines were down. Lance didn’t know what had even happened to Keith when he found him. He was so cold, and even after Lance warmed him he was still and silent. They were all alone in a wasteland, and Lance had a heavy mission on his shoulders taking care of them both. He couldn’t keep Keith alive by himself forever.</p><p>The wormhole opened up right when Lance had given in.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Keith &amp; Lance (Voltron), Keith &amp; Shiro (Voltron)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sleeping and Waking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Lance woke in pain. His eyes were heavy and sticky. It was so dark inside the cockpit. The blue lion was totally unresponsive.</p><p>“Uuuurg” groaned Lance. He sat up with difficulty.</p><p>“Guys? Can anybody hear me?” he asked into the communication line in his helmet.</p><p>No response. Radio silence.</p><p>Lance got up and limped around. He moved the levers. “Wake up, girl” he called to his lion.</p><p>What happened?</p><p>Everything was a blur after he and Keith-</p><p>Wait! He and Keith were shot by a Galra ship’s beam into a planet’s gravity. Where was Keith now?</p><p>Lance pushed open the door. His lion was laying in the dirt. He climbed down it to solid ground.</p><p>Lance made a low whistle. Everything was dry and barren. There was scrub here and there, but it was pretty dead-looking around.</p><p>“Keith!” called Lance. He tried to track him with his helmet. The technology was dead.</p><p>Lance started walking. He wasn’t sure how far he should stray from his lion. He needed shelter nearby. After what seemed like forever he actually saw the red lion in the distance.</p><p>“Keith!”</p><p>Approaching what looked like another plant on the ground, Lance stopped dead in his tracks when he got close enough to see the truth.</p><p>It was Keith.</p><p>Lance ran over and dropped next to him.</p><p>Oh no. Keith was… his skin was grey. His eyes were open half-lidded, unseeing and unblinking.</p><p>“Don’t. Don’t, Keith. Don’t do this. Please don’t be gone.”</p><p>What happened to him?</p><p>Lance put his hands on Keith’s shoulders, trying to move his crumpled form onto his back. But Keith was stiff. He went onto his back but his limbs had trouble changing position.</p><p>“No, buddy, come on. You can’t just <em>die</em>” begged Lance. He’d normally hate to beg in front of Keith, but there was no way Keith could hear him now anyway. Lance took his pulse. Well, not really, because as Lance feared… there was no pulse.</p><p>“Fuck!” Lance hissed. How long had Keith been like this? From the state of him it looked like an hour maybe? No, that couldn’t be right. Was Lance really out for an hour, anyway? Either way Keith was long gone. It was way too late to do anything about it.</p><p>But Lance couldn’t help himself. He had to try. He wrenched Keith’s chest armor off of him and pulled the helmet off of his head. He hoped he remembered how to do this right, even if this was half-assed and hopeless. He crossed one hand over the other on Keith’s chest and pressed down in a rhythm. Didn’t they say not to bother with mouth-to-mouth until there was a heartbeat? Maybe that was wrong.</p><p>He tried for a long time. Eventually he deflated and just sat there staring at Keith’s body. He pulled it up into his arms.</p><p>“I hope it didn’t hurt.”</p><p>He couldn’t believe this. How could this be real? Only that morning Keith was stretching his arms and yawning, acting like a normal human. Moving and breathing.</p><p>Speaking of, Lance was spooked by strange little gasping noises.</p><p>Keith was moving a little in his arms, making quiet sounds.</p><p>“Keith?! Hey, are you with me?”</p><p>Keith was still unresponsive but clearly something was happening. Lance put him down and took his pulse again. It was weak and irregular, but it was actually there now.</p><p>“No way” breathed Lance. “I totally knew it” he lied. “Leave it to good old Lance to save the day” he chuckled, a little hysterical.</p><p>Keith wasn’t actually truly breathing right. Lance panicked. He bent over and gave Keith rescue breaths, over and over again, until he was exhausted but Keith started breathing normally on his own. He patted Keith’s shoulder twice.</p><p>“That’s better.”</p><p>Keith’s body was relaxing, getting loose and warm again like it should be. His dull eyes were still open halfway and didn’t blink. Lance closed them for Keith, hoping his eyes weren’t hurt from being open all that time.</p><p>Lance looked towards the red lion and saw the marks in the dirt that implied Keith had dragged along before landing in his heap on the ground. He was probably flung right out of his lion. Lance had to hoist Keith up and carry him back to it.</p><p>Trying the buttons and levers in the red lion didn’t do anything. Lance tried again to contact the others with no luck. So he just… waited and thought.</p><p>Time was impossible to keep track of, so Lance didn’t know how long it had been when Keith opened his eyes again.</p><p>“Keith! Hey. Can you hear me?”</p><p>Keith blinked slowly while his eyes tried to focus. They slowly moved around until they settled on Lance. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even move. That wasn’t good.</p><p>“Talk to me, buddy” urged Lance, shaking Keith’s shoulder. Keith squinted at him. He looked tired and confused.</p><p>“Please just say something.”</p><p>Keith only looked around the cockpit. He closed his eyes again and seemed to sleep.</p><p>Lance was alone again. He pulled his knees up, put his head down between them, and groaned loudly.</p><p>-</p><p>It got very dark in the small room when night started to fall.</p><p>Lance had actually fallen asleep himself. He woke and smelled the familiar scent of urine. His nieces and nephews and friends’ kids had their fair share of bed accidents back in the day and Lance had a sort of parenting instinct come over him.</p><p>“Let me help you clean that up. Don’t worry, happens to the best of us” said Lance to Keith, even though he wasn’t sure that Keith was currently aware enough to understand. Keith looked at Lance for a second before closing his eyes again.</p><p>Lance opened the storage compartments for something to clean Keith off with. Luckily there were two blankets and some towels. Look at that. He pulled them out.</p><p>He paused over Keith, thinking. He could dry off the outside of his pants, but they’d still be too dirty to wear. He took a deep breath.</p><p>“Hoo boy. Okay. I’m gonna have to take your pants off. It’ll feel better, trust me. And I promise I won’t look.”</p><p>Lance draped a towel over Keith’s hips and pulled down his pants under it without exposing him. He took off Keith’s leg armor and shoes and pulled the pants all the way off. He looked around, shrugged, and draped them over the top of one of the storage containers.</p><p>He cleaned Keith and the floor with another towel, still not looking under the first one. He tossed the wet one into a corner and put the last, clean towel between Keith’s legs, hoping that it would help if this happened again.</p><p>Lance looked at the blankets. He pulled the first one over Keith’s body and folded the second and put it under Keith’s head.</p><p>Keith opened his eyes and looked at Lance. Lance smiled and rested a hand on Keith’s forehead. Keith sighed and closed his eyes shut once more.</p><p>Lance wanted to pretend that this wasn’t as terrible as it was. That Keith wasn’t doing very badly, and that he was just waiting for their team to arrive and still in contact with them, not just cut off on their own.</p><p>But he couldn’t pretend.</p><p>-</p><p>Lance spent most of the night awake but drifted in and out of consciousness as morning came. He was woken up by his stomach growling. Quiznak, he was starving. He opened another storage container and found- gasp- <em>space food!</em>A few vacuum-packed granola bar type things. He peeled open, dug in, and-</p><p><em>Blehh. </em>Disgusting. Oh well, he was so hungry he made himself choke it down anyway.</p><p>He looked at Keith. He was awake, eyes drifting around before seeing Lance watching him. Lance smiled.</p><p>“Hey, sleeping beauty. You’re probably hungry too, huh? You didn’t even eat breakfast before we got knocked into this dump.” Lance sat next to Keith.</p><p>“Can you try to eat? Try to sit up?”</p><p>Keith did not budge. Lance sighed. He tried to slide Keith a little to the right to prop him against the wall. Keith was dead weight. It was frustrating. Finally he got Keith leaned against the wall as best as he could.</p><p>“You are <em>heavy</em>” whined Lance. He held up an opened bar to Keith’s mouth. “Eat up.”</p><p>Keith sniffed it. Lance was pleasantly surprised when Keith actually opened his mouth for it. Lance put the food in his mouth but Keith could hardly chew it. Lance ended up cupping his jaw with a hand and moving it up and down to help him him chew it. He tried not to think about how messed up this was, but as established earlier, he just couldn’t pretend.</p><p>Lance worried for a second that Keith wouldn’t be able to swallow it, but thankfully there was no issue there.</p><p>After laying Keith back down Lance got up and wandered the cockpit. He fiddled with the console with no response. He willed his comm to work but it didn’t listen. “Shiro, Pidge, <em>anyone</em>” he called.</p><p>No one answered.</p><p>He thought about going outside again. He really should. Maybe there was civilization nearby. Maybe their friends were out there looking for them. But he really didn’t want to leave Keith alone, even if Keith would probably just sleep the whole time.</p><p>He decided in the end to venture out.</p><p>There was really nothing around. Not even <em>animals.</em> Lance didn’t want to lose the lion, so he took out his bayard and scorched the ground every few steps with a laser blast to leave a trail back to it.</p><p>Nothing and nothing and nothing. Maybe scraggly plants. No trees, no ponds.</p><p>Lance smacked his dry lips. Yes, they definitely had a glaring problem here.</p><p>They didn’t have any water.</p><p>-</p><p>Hours turned into <em>two whole days. </em>Lance continued with his routine; feed himself, feed Keith, try to wake up the red lion. He left again and found his way back to the blue lion, which <em>of course</em> was still down. He got a massive headache, his limbs heavy and weak. He just needed <em>water.</em></p><p>Keith started twitching and trying to move. It was a good thing and a bad thing.</p><p>“Hhhhhh. Ahhhhh!” Keith moaned. It was the first time he made a sound, and it was so <em>pained.</em> Lance cupped Keith’s face in his hands.</p><p>“I know, I know.”</p><p>Lance realized that Keith hadn’t changed positions on the hard floor in around two days. He smacked himself. Stupid, he should of thought of that sooner.</p><p>He, gently as he could, rolled Keith over on his side. Keith whimpered and sighed.</p><p>-</p><p>Lance dragged one foot in front of the other slowly. He couldn’t move his trembling body faster. Everything was spinning- it was hard to see. His head was going to explode. He needed rocks, or twigs. He wanted to form an S.O.S. sign that could be seem from the sky. He stepped on a pebble. He reached down for it, but his arm missed, and his world shifted. He was in the dirt face-down in the blink of an eye.</p><p>He moved his head to the side and coughed dirt out of his mouth. His eyes couldn’t stay open. He didn’t want to let himself sleep because he wouldn’t wake back up again.</p><p>He screamed in frustration and pain.</p><p>Then he decided that a small nap would be alright.</p><p>As the world faded away from him he could have sworn the ground was vibrating and a familiar thrumming whir sounded overhead.</p><p>-</p><p>Lance woke painlessly. His eyes weren’t heavy or sticky. The air was cool and soothing.</p><p>Bright light shone in his eyes and he felt himself moving forward.</p><p>“Woah, Lance!”</p><p>Lance knew that voice.</p><p>Hunk.</p><p>Lance blinked away the light and saw his friends standing around him with tearful smiles.</p><p>“Guys” he breathed. He stumbled fully out of the cryopod. “What the hell took you so long?”</p><p>“We didn’t see what happened to you two after you got struck. We thought you’d been vaporized” said Shiro. “We thought we lost you.”</p><p>“You nearly did!” said Lance. “Couldn’t you track the lions?”</p><p>“Their systems were shot so we couldn’t read their location” explained Hunk. “Coran was the one who had the idea to check Kyrack.”</p><p>“Ky-who?” asked Lance.</p><p>“The planet you were stranded on” answered Coran.</p><p>“Coran, my gorgeous man, you’re my hero!” sang Lance. Coran stroked his mustache and waved Lance off. “Well now, I don’t know about- no, yes, I am.”</p><p>Shiro shook his head.</p><p>“Man, me and Keith-” Lance started, but his eyes widened. “Keith! Shit, where’s Keith? Did he make it?”</p><p>Everyone gestured towards another cryopod. Keith rested peacefully. Lance was so glad to see him without a face contorted in discomfort and confusion.</p><p>“Whew. I thought… wait, guys, you need to know this. I don’t know how he was when you found him, but Keith was hurt <em>bad. </em>He couldn’t move or talk or-“</p><p>“We’ve seen the cryopod’s analysis of his condition” said Allura. She put her head down slightly. “There’s tissue death in the brain.”</p><p>“<em>Tissue death?” </em>balked Lance. “That sounds… awful. But the cryopod can help it grow back or something, right?”</p><p>Everyone looked at each other. Lance really didn’t like those expressions.</p><p>“Right?” Lance repeated.</p><p>“It’s not that simple” said Shiro. He looked just as heartbroken as Lance was now feeling.</p><p>“No… is it permanent? Is he going to get <em>worse?”</em></p><p>“He probably has the same chance of recovering as someone on earth without the Altean stuff. Which is… not incredibly high I don’t think.”</p><p>“Lance… what happened to him?” asked Pidge.</p><p>Lance didn’t exactly know. He explained it as best he could. How Keith looked like he was ejected from his lion, how his heart wasn’t beating for a very long time.</p><p>“I didn’t think trying to revive him would work, but somehow he came back to me. It’s… impressive” said Lance.</p><p>Shiro smiled slightly. Fondly. Shiro was the closest friend to Keith. Lance figured that this was going to be harder on him than the rest of them.</p><p>-</p><p>Lance wanted to be the one to take Keith out of the pod. The others understood.</p><p>After what they went through together Lance needed to feel Keith alive and warm against him.</p><p>Keith came out as limp as before, but Lance was ready for it. He held up Keith in an embrace.</p><p>“I gotcha” whispered Lance. He could feel Keith’s warm breaths against his neck. He moved him into a bridal carry and laid him down on a cot.</p><p>Keith was looking at him.</p><p>“Hey, buddy. We made it, huh?”</p><p>“H-h-haaaaah” said Keith.</p><p>Was that a smile on his face?</p><p>-</p><p>Keith <em>did </em>improve. His progress was- as Lance thought again- impressive. He gained strength. He could move his arms a decent amount. Speaking actual words hadn’t become a thing yet, though, so it was hard to know quite how aware he was.</p><p>Until Pidge and Hunk came in with a program they had made on their holo-tablet.</p><p>“It’s eye-gaze communication” said Pidge excitedly. “He can look at the pictures, phrases, and letters and we can see if he can understand them and tell us.”</p><p>They explained it to Keith and he held the holo-tablet by himself. After a good couple of minutes a robotic voice spoke.</p><p>
  <em>“Tired Can’t Sleep.”</em>
</p><p>“Keith!” said Lance, a smile splitting his face.</p><p>Exclamations of relief and joy filled the room until Coran held his hand up.</p><p>“Now, wait a tic you all. We have to actually <em>listen </em>to what he has to say. So, you’re having trouble sleeping lately, Keith? I’m glad you could tell us! I couldn’t tell. We can whip up some sleeping elixir faster than a rolling ferf beetle on ice!”</p><p>Everyone chuckled. They watched Keith use the program until more words rung out.</p><p>
  <em>“Good Lance.”</em>
</p><p>Lance smiled. “Yo! I don’t really know what you mean but hey, I am good. Lance is the best.”</p><p><em>“Shiro.”</em> </p><p>Shiro stepped forward. “Yeah, kiddo?”</p><p>
  <em>“Hug.”</em>
</p><p>Shiro tensed for a moment before throwing himself forward and giving Keith the best hug they both ever had.</p><p>-</p><p>In the end Keith never quite <em>fully </em>recovered. There were headaches and mild blurry vision from his eyes being open in the sun too long, some weakness on his left side from injury to the right side of his brain. He still had trouble forming full sentences. It couldn’t hold him back, though.</p><p>“Pulling punches!” complained Keith as they sparred. He pinned Lance to the ground.</p><p>“I am not! You’re just a beast! Quit busting my balls!” said Lance as he threw Keith off to the side. Keith huffed out a laugh.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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